Help:Creating and Editing Articles
Here are some guidelines for creating and editing articles on this site. General guidelines *'Make sure your subject matter is notable.' Articles about games, characters, activities, and other products (books, toys, etc.) are almost always helpful. Articles about things that appear in JumpStart, but are not deeply connected to it (such as an animal that appears in a JumpStart game) which are of little importance to JumpStart and which would mostly be filled with non-explicitly JumpStart related information are discouraged. Also, don't add too much information to JumpStart-related articles which isn't directly related to JumpStart. If necessary, add an external link to a Wikipedia page discussing a subject relevant to the article but not particularly relevant to JumpStart on the whole. *'Be detailed, but relatively concise.' Generally, try not to repeat information multiple times on a page unless there's a good reason for it. For example, in an activity article, you might make a list of difficulty level differences based on your own observation but also include a similar list as a part of the digital manual description of the activity, or you might summarize briefly something in the introduction of an article and write on it in more detail later, but don't be redundant for no reason. Also, including a lot of details is recommended if the details are relevant and/or interesting, but don't clutter articles with information that is not very informative. *'Good organization is important.' Make sure the structure of your articles is logical and makes sense to readers. Make sure not to include too many headings, but don't include too few either. *'Good grammar, spelling, sentence structure, paragraph structure, etc. is important. '''A few errors are bound to happen, but do your best to keep the Wiki professional, readable, understandable, and clean. Even if you make some mistakes, at least try to be clear enough that others can refine your work later. *'Be bold! Don't let fear of not making the perfect edit dissuade you from editing! Users (including both you and others) can always refine what you wrote later. Creating a new article '''Before You Start *Briefly search the wiki and make sure that an article about the subject doesn't already exist. *Spend time researching and gathering info before you create the page. Ideally, a new article should contain about a paragraph of text, and at least one image if possible. Understandably, new pages are prone to being short and not very fleshed out, but the more you can start out with, the better. 'Creating Articles for Products with the Same Name' When two JumpStart products have the same name, the usual way of differentiating them is to add text in parentheses after the title, which specifies some kind of difference. Here are the general methods of differentiation: *When two games have the same name, the year of release is used. For example: [[JumpStart Preschool (1995)|''JumpStart Preschool (1995)]] and [[JumpStart Preschool (1999)|''JumpStart Preschool (1999)]]. *When two activities have the same name, the name of the game that they come from is used. Article content 'Game Articles' Game articles generally contain the following sections: *Introduction - An introductory paragraph is standard, and should appear at the very beginning of the article. The introductory paragraph should ideally include the game's release date, what educational subjects and age group it pertains to, and a brief summary of the game's theme or concept. *List of Activities - A list of activities, or individual mini-games, is customary for most JumpStart games. Activities should include a brief description of game play (though this is not absolutely essential if ''each activity has a decently descriptive page of its own). *Gallery - This is where to add images, such as screenshots or promotional artwork. Images may also appear in the body of the article; in fact, at times this is preferable to putting them in the gallery. It is also customary to use infoboxes for games. (See below) 'Character Articles' Character articles generally contain the following sections: *Appearance - This is where you briefly describe what the character looks like. *Personality and Characteristics - This is where to describe the character's personality, behavior, and mannerisms. You can also include the character's skills, abilities, interests, relationships with other characters, and other traits. *In Games - This is where to describe the character's role in each game they have appeared in. *Gallery - This is where to add images of the character. It is also customary to use infoboxes for characters. (See below) 'Activity Articles''' Activity articles generally contain the following sections (note that "Premise" and "Description" are often fused since the Premise is usually very short): *Premise - Describes the in-universe justification for the activity. *Description - Describes gameplay in thorough detail. *Subjects description - Only for activities which can teach multiple subjects; optimally, this should include a gallery that shows how the activity changes between subjects. *Difficulty level differences - Describes how the activity changes between difficulty levels. Optimally, this should contain a gallery that shows how the activity changes. *Digital manual description - Contains the description of the activity directly copied from the digital manual, including any pictures from it. *Gallery - For extra pictures that don't fit elsewhere. Misc. style guidelines *Any headings other than the first commonly-used heading (Heading 2) should be bolded. *Names of products should be in italics; this may be ignored in the case of infoboxes. *There need not be more than one link to a given page in a single article, ''except ''in the case of infoboxes and lists such as Characters lists, where it is recommended that all entries that can be made into links should be, even if there is a link to that page elsewhere in the aritcle. Links are also usually a good idea for section headings in "In the games" sections and galleries. Infoboxes Infoboxes are used to categorize information about a subject. The code for an infobox must be copied from the infobox's page and inserted in Source mode when editing. Alternatively, simply use the Insert option, select Infobox, and choose the kind of infobox needed. The infoboxes most commonly used on the JumpStart Wiki are Template:Character Infobox, Template:Game Infobox, and Template:Activity Infobox.